Gaining and maintaining customer loyalty is the name of the game. In today’s flooded online market space, building a loyal following is a delicate juggling act. A juggling act requiring the provision of a reliable service or product, paired with the creation and delivery of engaging marketing content.
If the quality of your product or service doesn’t meet or exceed your advertised marketing content, you will never obtain genuine customer loyalty. On the other side of the coin, if your marketing content doesn’t do your product or service justice, you will never achieve the level of loyalty you are deserving.
Why customer loyalty is important
There are literally thousands of articles and studies preaching the importance of customer loyalty. Here are a few of the recurring themes found throughout the literature:
Loyal customers are far easier (and cost far less) to retain when compared with obtaining new customers
Loyal customers become vocal advocates for your brand, product or service
Loyal customers make up the majority of your sales. As a general rule of thumb think 80-20. 20% of your existing customers (loyal customers), make-up 80% of your profits
So how do you measure customer loyalty?
Measuring loyalty is, essentially, measuring the strength of the relationship between you and your customer. There are a number of ways we can do this. There are a few simple steps any business owner can take to start the process with little hassle or marketing knowledge.
1 – Examine your referrals
The blatantly obvious way to start measuring customer loyalty is through observing referrals. Are your existing customers advocating your product or service to others? How have new customers found your business or service, word of mouth?
For most business owners, and many marketers, this is where loyalty measurement ends.
There are a number of online strategies and resources that will allow you to obtain a great deal more information about customer loyalty.
2 – Measuring your website’s RVR
Your website should be the first point of call for measuring online customer loyalty. It is by no means the only way to gauge customer loyalty online (especially with the rise of social media), but because it acts as the destination funnel for most of your online marketing content, it can give you the best snapshot.
A lot of businesses and marketers spend a lot of time monitoring and trying to increase organic website views, but very few are paying attention to their return visitor rate. The return visitor rate (RVR) is a metric that calculates the number of return visitS to your website. To work out your websites RVR you need to divide your number of return visits by the total number of unique visits.
RVR’s tend to fluctuate between 25 to 50 percent (depending on the industry). If your number falls lower than this bracket, you’ve probably got some work to do. If your number is higher, it might be time to look at investing in attracting some new visits and customers.
3 – Your online conversation
While you shouldn’t focus all your time and energy on building Instagram likes, Facebook shares or Twitter re-tweets, generating an online conversation is super important. Are people talking about your products or services online? Are they leaving reviews?
Gauging customer loyalty should be a big part of your marketing strategy. Taking time to understand and nurture your relationship with loyal customers won’t only increase your ROI, it will assist you in building a tribe of loyal advocates. And loyalty is a trait that will take your business to the next level.
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